Youth Mentoring Program Application: Fill & Download for Free

Jack's Youth Mentoring Club. It's a wonderful program which corresponds to the Brookings County Youth Mentoring Program. You would sign up to me a mentor to one of the over seventy school-age students in the Brookings area. You choose your interests and preferred age and are matched with a mentee. It's a great volunteer opportunity which looks wonderful on job applications, it's only a requirement of 4 hours a month, and you will truly make a difference in the life of your mentee. They will look up to you in a way you've never experienced and I can promise that.

This is perhaps a bit more than a nudge but:Funding after school programsFunding mentorship programs (like Big Brothers and Big Sisters)Summer enrichment programsPrograms that help educate parents (GED, literacy, parenting, etc..)Another way would be to do a better job of marketing and connecting the interest of students with what are known to be effective programs. This probably honors the notion of nudge more than the others. One example of this is connecting high school students to college financial aid. A local school leader, who was a principle or assistant principal stayed in the halls during key times to 1) be friendly 2) encourage 3) to help get students to visit the college planning room (which I think he ran and in turn verbally explained the application funding process and presumably helped students to apply). There is a huge gap between high school and college and this leader was helping bridge that divide.To be fair, from the perspective of the student, these are likely nudges (or something close), even though they might be expensive programs from the side of the administration.Here are a couple:You can find the evidence for youth mentoring here: The Center for Evidence-Based MentoringHere is a list of benefits from mentoring:Based on our study of mentoring programs in Minnesota, it is clear that such programs can produce some or all of the following direct benefits whose values can (in principle) be quantified: ƒImproved school attendance and performance – leading to increased graduation rates, increased post-secondary education, and higher lifetime earnings; ƒReduced truancy – resulting in reduced school costs and, ultimately, reduced high school dropouts and increased lifetime earnings; ƒ Improved health outcomes – including reductions in teen pregnancy, reduced or delayed use of tobacco, alcohol, or illicit drugs; ƒReduced juvenile crime (both violence and property crimes) – saving victim costs, court costs, and costly treatment of juvenile offenders; ƒReduced costs of adult crime – both the crime losses of victims and the societal costs of prosecuting and incarcerating adult offenders; ƒReduced needs for social services – both near-term costs of counseling and long-term costs of public assistance;Source: https://teammates.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Analyzing-the-Social-Return-on-Investment-for-Youth-Mentoring.pdfThis should point in a similar direction: Does Mentoring Matter? A Multidisciplinary Meta-Analysis Comparing Mentored and Non-Mentored IndividualsThis version is easier to print and deal with perhaps: https://www.uwplatt.edu/files/tlc/Mentoring/Meta%20Analysis%20of%20Mentoring.pdf

Try calling Big Brothers Big Sisters? They don't work exclusively with foster kids, but they have an application and interview process that allows a lot of opportunity to specify what kinds of kids you'd most like to mentor. You could also try getting in touch with local schools--I'm not from the Bay Area, but where I'm at, there are a lot of school-based mentoring programs that might be able to connect you with somebody. It's pretty likely that confidentiality rules related to foster care will mean these organizations can't actually just say, "oh, yeah, here's a foster kid for you to work with!" But they can definitely connect you with a kid who needs some extra support and stability.You could also try calling whatever community mental health organization serves low-income kids in your area. It's not a universal thing, but some of them have mentoring and/or respite-care programs in place for kids who are classified as high-risk for institutionalization or removal from parental custody.The other thing you could look into, depending on the age range you want to work with, is doing some volunteer work with transition-age youth. Most states have initiatives specifically aimed at supporting people from about age 16-24, who are aging out of foster care/state custody, and need help learning skills like opening a bank account, getting an apartment lease, applying to jobs/college, etc.